to the neon god they made
by quothme
Summary: The children of District 12 take a pilgrimage down to the mines. AU in which Katniss and Peeta are a few weeks from their final Reaping, from a farce of freedom, standing at the precipice of the lives they should have led.
1. Chapter 1

It's always an elevator.

Sometimes it's a Capitol elevator, like in one of the fancy buildings where they keep the Tributes. Elevators made of glass so you look like you're flying as it takes you up up up. But more often, it's one like in the mines. Like you're in a cage, descending down the devil's throat, as the miners down at the Hob call it. The ones who still smile and talk and laugh. The younger ones, like Gale and Thom.

This time, the elevator is all sleek steel. She doesn't want to take it (she doesn't trust it), but it's the only way down. And she needs to get down from here. The building might crumble at any moment. She knows it. So she steps in.

The elevator doors remain open for a long moment, blithely inviting any other prey. She remains alone. With a chirp, the doors close at last, and the elevator begins to descend.

She hears a countdown, the opening cannon.

…89…88…87…

Then the elevator screeches and gives a sickening lurch. Katniss catches herself on the handrails. For a beat, the world stills. She's eying the doors, silver teeth, when the elevator pitches again, throwing her to the ground. With a final scream, it's free-falling, plummeting her to her death.

The numbers blur now into one long stream…7574737271

All she can do is crouch and watch the walls whip by, striations of rock that take her deeper and deeper into the mouth of hell. The walls of the elevator seem to constrict, until she's in a capsule barely big enough for her body.

She can't breathe, can't scream.

She just falls and falls and falls.

…3…2…1…

She wakes, shooting up and scrabbling about to get her bearings. Incongruous sunlight bathes her face, and a soft, warm body rumbles a sleepy threat when Katniss flails against it.

Looking more closely, she sees that the body is Prim.

Prim's not a morning person.

For a while, Katniss sits back against her pillow and just breathes, lets the panic and the dream recede. Her mouth is sour, her hair stringy against her neck. But she's safe in her bed, safe in the Seam.

It's just the dream. The dream she's had hundreds of times, hundreds of nights. It doesn't mean anything.

Then she remembers what today is.

* * *

Katniss is unsettled, distracted all morning, spilling first her oats, then her water as she and Prim get ready for school. She re-braids her hair three times before it's neat enough to wear, and even then she settles for one of her more simple variations, looped about and pinned up so the uneven doesn't show. She's never been so all-thumbs, and she catches Mother and Prim sharing a secret smile.

At this, her mood sours further. They think they understand. It's the last week of school, and then only a few weeks until Katniss turns eighteen. Only a few more weeks until she's free from a final Reaping forever, free to choose a vocation. Or a husband.

Prim has already been teasing her about having senioritis (as though Katniss has ever been anything but lethargic toward school), and Mother has been dropping subtle hints that can only point to one thing. They're just vague enough that Mother could claim innocence, but Mother doesn't usually talk about summer flowers or a visit to the tailor, so.

Change is in the wind. It tastes like bitterbark.

One last week of school, and then the Hawthornes and the Everdeens will have their celebratory meal on Saturday, like they do every year after school ends. Mother has been dropping hints about this, too. As if there's even a remote possibility that Gale will try anything in front of so many people. But these are her people, their people, this is family, so you never know. Mother and Prim certainly anticipate.

If Gale knows what's good for him, he'll propose out in the woods. Where there are no people. And preferably after she's tucked away her bow. But she doesn't want to think about that, doesn't want to think about Gale or proposals or even the future. So she thinks about today instead.

Today is the mines.

* * *

In the final week of school, the scholars of District 12 get the dubious pleasure of taking their annual field trip to the mines. They start going down there in middle school, where they're old enough not to wet their pants and cry for their mommy but still young enough to be impressionable (Gale's words). Graduating seniors get to go on a special trip of their own, to a different part of the mine than the younger kids.

"It's subliminal brainwashing," Gale rants. "Release us from school on an exciting trip down to see what our daddies and mommies do all day. Show us all the fun parts, like the well-ventilated upper levels and the piles of sorted minerals and the yellow miner's hats with the lights on them. Make sure everyone's well-fed that day with treats like bread and meat and hey, maybe even a pinch of sugar, what a rush—"

"Shut up," Katniss says at that point because if she doesn't, this could go on for a while.

Gale says this now, but she remembers what he was like the first day he'd gone down into the mines himself, already so tall and so wise, swearing to her afterward that he'd seen the Blind Man, from the cautionary tale of an old miner who'd gone mad in the dark and had morphed into something not quite human.

Of course, that was before the explosion, back when she and Gale still made jokes about the mines. Before those same mines ripped their fathers from them and left them on the brink of starvation.

So Katniss hates the mines. Hates how they make people look and how they smell and how they've taken father and now Gale. Oh, Gale's still alive, sure, but it's not the same. When he turned eighteen and went to work in the mines, everything changed. Given his demanding hours, Gale can no longer walk her and Prim home from school. He can hunt with her only once a week, on his day off. Even then, he's often too tired to rise before the sun, like she does. She resents his late nights at the Hob, of him smelling of coal spice and drink. He doesn't smell like the woods anymore. He doesn't smell like Gale.

When she and Prim get to school, many of the other seniors are buoyant, eager to escape the confines of their classes. Granted, many of them are Townies, so they have places to escape to after they graduate. Their parents are florists and grocers and bakers.

Even Madge, whose head is not normally turned by such nonsense, gets carried away. Katniss stands alone at the edge of the soccer field, where her classmates are lining up to step into the wagons that will cart them to the mines. It feels like a Reaping, Katniss separated from everyone she loves. No Prim and no Gale here for her to stand with.

"Do you want to sit with us, Katniss?" Madge asks. _Us_, she says, because she's not alone, not anymore. Behind her is the half-moon of her flock, a few truly nice girls like Delly and others who are nice to Madge because she's the Mayor's daughter. It wasn't always that way. Katniss can remember a time when they were younger, when it was just she and Gale and Madge sitting together at lunch. Gale would sometimes sneak her a strawberry, the wild ones that grow outside the fence.

For a moment, Katniss considers the offer. She's missed Madge. When Gale left for the mines, no longer an imposing presence at their lunch table, their extra seats were quickly filled by a gaggle of girls, sillier than a pack of turkeys. For Madge, Katniss tried. She did. But it couldn't have been more than a week before she found another table, less crowded.

Still, silly is preferable to the alternative, when you're in the mines. She'd be safe with Madge and her crew. It's customary to stick with your friends down there. Otherwise, you chance spending the day forced to get friendly with a stranger or with some handsy Townie. There's often barely enough room to turn around.

Then Priscilla Cleary—_Prissy_, as everyone calls her behind her back—locks eyes with her and leans over to whisper to one of the other girls. They both laugh and watch to see what Madge's charity Seam friend will do now. Not for the first time, Katniss wishes she had her bow. She'd prefer to show them what she can do.

Madge follows her gaze, then turns back with an apology. Katniss doesn't understand why she puts up with them. Good practice, she supposes, for the future wife of the Mayor.

"No thanks," Katniss says. _I'm sorry_, her eyes say.

Madge understands. "Catch up with you later, then?" And she means it. Katniss has no doubt that Madge will look for her again when they get to the mines. She learned long ago not to take Katniss' inevitable no for an answer.

* * *

The air is so thick with coal spice that even the Seam kids can smell it. As they spill from the wagons, the Townies put their hands or kerchiefs over their noses. Some of the boys pretend to gag. Katniss watches impassively, the boys with their peacocking and the girls with their ridiculous, pristine clothes. It's one of the best parts, getting to see everyone at the end, covered in the same grime. Coal doesn't discriminate. It gets everywhere on everyone. Even dainty Prissy with her white (white!) gloves and her sneer.

Katniss trails at the fringes of the group, not really eager to step into the Museum, the monument where they always start their tour. The Museum seems to have been built to chronicle the rousing history of District 12 and its miners. It's used only rarely, such as when the Capitol needs footage from 12 or for the occasional tour.

When you step in the door, you wend through the coal mine painted on the floor, stopping at interactive kiosks to learn fun facts about the wonderful world of fossil fuels. See, this is how we coax it from its bed in the earth (smiling yellow hats). Here's how we sort it and cure it (more smiling hats). Here are the lovely people across the Districts who benefit from our labor (smiles and smiles). And peppered throughout these fun facts, these lovely stories, are pictures of the miners themselves, arranged in rows like they're a sporting team or an army, year after year, not a pickaxe out of place. They're not smiling.

This is a glorious tradition, folks, the walls scream. You, too, can be part of it.

Katniss can't pick her father out of his photo.

After an hour in the Museum, they head to the equipment shed. There, they get to put on their own yellow hats, buckle them up real tight and check them twice. They're each issued a blunt rock hammer and a ration pack, which the Townies usually eat before the morning is half over and which the Seam usually squirrel away to take back home. Katniss herself pockets the granola bar.

And then it's time to descend.

It's time for the elevator.

Katniss stoops and pretends to tie her boot, letting a herd of Townies stream by. This is the elevator where her father died. Oh, it's not the same one, of course. It's the upgraded model, 100% safety guaranteed. So said the propos that had aired during the mandatory viewing hour, in the weeks after it was installed. In the weeks after the accident.

The other kids crowd in, Townies jockeying so they're not standing too close to someone from the Seam, purposefully shifting their weight so the conveyance sways and juts up against the rough walls. Until the old miner with no teeth shouts at everyone to be quiet, to be still, like he does every year.

This is it. Who you're standing by in the elevator is your fellow sardine for the next several hours. It's first in, first out, as they do a loop through Grand Central, then usually through one of the maintenance tunnels.

Katniss stands on her toes, a last-ditch look for Madge, who she'd been tracking earlier in the crowd but now lost in the melee. Before she can squeeze in and hope for the best, the metal grate slides shut.

"Take the next one," says the old miner, already turning to growl at a couple of Townies who've started to rock the boat. The elevator creaks and sways under their efforts, and a few girls (all Townie, of course) mock-shriek.

Katniss steps back to wait her turn with a few others, supervised by a surly shift lead who apparently drew the short stick this morning. The remaining Townies mill about in clumps, tossing rocks and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Seam, like her, stand quietly and stare at the walls. Her eyes trace the striations in the rock, these layers of history. Each and every one a story. She wonders if it still shows, the blast that killed her father.

At long last, the elevator rumbles back from the depths, opening to accept the smaller group. Katniss boards first, so she can wedge herself into the back corner, her fingers curled around the wire mesh.

"Glenn," someone hisses, and she looks over to see that one of the Townie boys is watching the old elevator technician with a sly grin, waiting for his back to turn, shifting on the balls of his feet. But before he can really lean in to it, his friend, the one who'd said his name, cuffs him in the ear. "Don't." His tone is light. His fist was not.

Katniss looks away, her throat suddenly tight. She's…grateful. Grateful for the smaller group, plenty of space between them to breathe and to focus on not thinking, on not feeling. Grateful that she'll get to ride in peace and dignity, like her father hadn't. In a way, it feels like she's descending into a grave. Like she's here to pay her respects.

Something about the exchange tickles her consciousness, so she chances a second look. The boy who'd stayed Glenns' hand, she knows him. As if sensing her gaze, his eyes dart over to meet hers. Her stomach drops away, and it's not just because the elevator starts to move.

It's the Baker's son.

* * *

The ride is quiet, as elevator rides often are, the primal fear of heights a whisper in their collective mind. As they go down, the temperature goes up. They're all sweating now, and the fun has only just begun. Katniss is glad she pinned her hair up off her neck, glad she wore her most threadbare dress. She hopes Prissy and crew are sweltering in their more substantial Capitol fabrics.

They reach the bottom with a jolt. Wedged in the back corner like she is, Katniss is the last to step out of the rickety cage when the metal gate slides open. She feels something—relief?—to see that several heads separate her from the Baker's son. They won't be on top of each other, and he won't feel forced to make small talk like "Watch your head" or "Wow, it's hot" or "Hey, remember that day with the bread?" There's a reason she's never talked to him.

They clip in, a sturdy rope that joins their belts, and then descend a short passage, a line of ants, until they step in to the controlled chaos of Grand Central. Lanterns deck the walls of the roughly circular cavern, which is swarming with productivity. This is the beating heart of the mine, a steady stream of wheelbarrows and miners pumping in and out of tunnels that go here and there, yellow hats and lights everywhere. They scurry in from these tunnels, dump heaps of coal onto large conveyor belts that carry it back to the surface, and then whisk their empty wheelbarrow away for another round.

Above the din, the Capitol foreman gathers all the kids together, arranging them in rows, and fairly shouts a description of what everyone is doing, the Diggers and the Loaders and the Sorters. Katniss has heard it all before. Father was a Digger.

Sometimes she feels as though her father is still down here, still singing and whistling somewhere down a long-forgotten shaft. The canary, they used to call him. They don't call him that any more, on account of his dying and all. Katniss supposes canaries are expendable.

They've nearly finished their circuit of Grand Central—"next stop, the west wing!" crows the Capitol foreman with a flourish, channeling his inner Caesar Flickerman—when it happens, too quick for a scream. Someone grabs her arm and yanks the clip from her belt. She smells the dusky sweat of a miner. He has her in his grip and has sequestered her down a nearby access path before she even knows what's happening. When she draws a breath to scream, he covers her hand with his mouth and leans in.

"Katniss," a voice says in her ear. "It's me."

She knows this voice. As he pulls back, the face is still alien, coated in coal, a jag of pink for its mouth. She socks him across the face. Not as hard as she can, but hard enough.

"What was that for?" Gale slurs, holding his jaw.

"You _grabbed_ me." She's agitated, pacing back and forth to expend the fight or flight adrenaline.

"I know. I wanted to see you. But I'm not supposed to."

She whirls on him again. "You could have told me, before." Given her some hint of what he planned. He knows she doesn't do surprises. Certainly not in public.

"It's dark, I took a chance." She _scathes_ at him, but she's softening. He knows just what to say. "Anyway, I wasn't sure I could get away. I'm on break, but I had to haul…" He catches himself. "…rear to get back up here in time to nab you in Central. Would have been harder once you kids get in to the tunnels."

She shakes her head at his logic, at his refusal to say dirty words to her, as if she hasn't already heard them all in the Hob since she was twelve. Then she's distracted by what he's saying.

"How deep are you these days?"

That wipes the grin. "Deepest."

It's sobering, the idea that even the elevator can take you only so far. She can't be mad at Gale. He just wanted to see her, down there in the dark. He hardly ever gets to see the light.

He lounges against the wall, casual as can be, as though they're out for a stroll in the woods, stopping for shade under a willow. "So, Saturday."

"Saturday." She's going to make him dig. He's a miner, after all.

"The big shindig," he prompts. "Our mothers have been concocting."

She sighs, but this is good. This is safe, Gale keeping it all light. "They do that."

"They do indeed. I mean, it's just a party, right? It's almost like they think someone's going to propose or something." Gale looks at her askance now, an expression on his face like _can you believe those chuckleheads_? But there's something deeper there, too, something uncertain.

Katniss goes very still, like she does sometimes in the woods. She thinks a thousand thoughts. She thinks nothing at all. They've talked about this. They've talked about marriage and kids and how these things just aren't possible for her. She doesn't want to talk anymore, so she plays dumb.

"Rory knows Prim is too young. He wouldn't, would he?"

Gale plays along. "Nah, he knows it's too soon. Next year, maybe." He shifts his weight, tosses a pebble, which echoes further down the shaft. "So I hear they're taking you to the west wing. That's deep."

"As deep as you?"

"I'm deepest, remember? You mere mortals couldn't handle it. Anyway, you'll like it, where they're taking you."

"Then I should get back. Wouldn't want to miss the _surprise_."

Gale nods and pushes off from the wall, striding to lead her back the way they'd come. Then he stops and pivots so quickly that she runs in to him. He catches her easily, smiling.

"Sorry, that's a buttonhook. We miners like to have our fun." Fun, he calls it. Katniss remembers some of the hazing that Gale himself was subjected to when he was first conscripted. Like being left down in the dark overnight. Fun.

He sobers, and his face is the night sky. "Listen, Katniss, be careful down there. If you hear anything, don't go investigate."

He seems serious, but she's not quite sure. He's tried to scare her before. "What do you mean?"

"There are stories. You know, things that go bump in the night, that kind of thing." His grin turns naughty. "Let's just say I'm not the only thing down here that likes to whisk nubile girls off to a secret lair."

He's just trying to scare her, she's sure of it. She shoves him forward. "Nubile. They teach you that fancy word in miner's school?" She only has a vague idea of what it means. Gale, though, he reads whatever he can get his hands on, stolen moments at school and in the forest. She's the only one who knows he reads. He's wasted down here.

Together, they trek back to the lamplight. As they step into the throngs in Grand Central, they sidle casually back toward the group, just two miners, shoop di shoo. Amid the hustle and bustle, they remain anonymous and oh so sneaky. Gale clips her back in to the end of the conga line as it snakes down toward the west wing.

Then he gives her a jaunty tip of the helmet, and he's gone.

* * *

They shuffle like good little miners, heading farther in the tunnels than Katniss has ever been before, farther than she would have ever thought it would be safe to take teenagers. But she'd missed the speech, so she didn't know where they were headed, or why. All she can tell is that they seem to be walking roughly horizontally rather than down into the bowels like Gale. Briefly, she considers asking ahead, then discards the idea. The Seam girl she'd clipped in to seems even more shy and quiet than she is, the perfect buffer. Katniss doesn't want to ruin it.

Once, the caravan comes to a halt, and they wait for what feels like forever. Then there's some commotion ahead, and Katniss flattens against the wall as one of their miner escorts (on babysitting duty) edges through, a bedraggled Townie girl in tow. _She fainted_, comes the whisper, like a game of tellyphone. Only after the girl passes does Katniss realize it's Prissy, nearly unrecognizable under all the muck. It happens every year, some girl or boy who just can't handle it. Or who fake it, Seam kids who think maybe they can get out of it, that this doesn't have to be their life.

A tug, and they're moving again. They walk for ages, farther than Katniss has ever walked in the mines before. They might walk forever.

Then, the air stirs with something new. Chatter begins to increase, the hum of bees. Anticipation thrums. From somewhere beyond, she hears whoops, the unmistakable sound of exulting. They've obviously arrived. The pace increases, tugs at her belt, and Katniss has to walk quickly to keep up.

There's more jubilation as wave after wave of seniors take in the surprise. Katniss reaches the end of the tunnel and steps through the supporting beams, a portal into the beyond, where glitters a night sky.

* * *

She's stepped into a cathedral of crystal.

It's one thing to read about stalactites and stalagmites in books, and to try to remember the difference between the two for a test. It's an entirely new experience to see them in person, these majestic pillars, testaments to some incredible patience. Hanging from the ceiling like behemoths, jutting from the earth like teeth. Some of them are taller than she is. In this room are thousands of years of history. Before the Games. Before the War. Before maybe even man walked the earth above.

There are pictures of other caves in the Museum, sure, pockets of crystallization, an oversized geode, that have been discovered through the years, intermixed with the coal beds, but this. This is something else. A natural wonder, buried right here beneath their humble district.

Now their tour guide, the foreman speaks, from somewhere above. They look up and he's spotlighted by umpteen helmets, where he's climbed a short rise. "We found this jewel six months ago, an exploratory dig into previously uncharted territory. You're the first students to come here." His voice echoes oddly in the cavern. They're reverent now, he their priest, a stalagmite his podium. "You're the first to see this." He hoists his lantern and sets it into a natural shelf nearby. As if on cue, the other miners, staggered here and there throughout the cavern, also set down their lanterns, a choreograph.

As they do, light shatters into a million pieces, refracted endlessly in crystals here there and everywhere. They look, they dazzle.

Katniss had thought the sun was beautiful, fracturing in the eddies in her father's lake. The cave bursts with crystals of all colors, shapes, and sizes, like stained glass. In this chamber, they are are not Town, not Seam, not miners. They are the same, but pilgrims basking in this wonder.

But there's more. In the twinkle of twilight, Katniss sees something else, a ripple and a shiver in the cave floor ahead. She cranes forward, bumping up against one of her fellow onlookers.

"Sorry," he whispers, as though he's the one who bumped in to her. The Baker's son, of course, but she doesn't respond, can't respond. Because beyond, she sees something else. She can hear it now, can smell it—water. This is not just a cave.

"Yes," the foreman says, noting her interest. "And the greatest secret of them all." He ushers them carefully forward, leading them on a hidden path through the ages, until they stand on a shore lapped by an obsidian lake. "Anyone care for a dip?"

Katniss doesn't even think. She joins the throng of humanity that tumbles toward the cool water, after so long in the stifling heat and crush of rock. For the first time, she's one of them, one in life and joy and belonging. She strips off her dress with the rest of the girls, not even caring who sees her camisole and bloomers before she slips neatly into the water. It's warm, like coming home.

"Stay close," the foreman calls, and the other miners with him fan out along the shore like sentinels. They needn't have worried, as none of the other kids knows how to swim. Katniss wades in as deep as she dares, water to her neck. She can feel it, how easy it would be to just kick up her legs and float. Some of the other kids are trying to do just that, spluttering mouthfuls when they fail. Finally, they learn how to buoy each other up, a single hand on the small of their backs. She remembers her father doing the same, so long ago.

Unexpectedly, her eyes glaze. She thinks of how much her father loved their lake, up on the surface. He never got a chance to see this one.

"It's glorious," a quiet voice says nearby.

She looks over to see a boy standing with water up to his bare chest some careful meters away, watching her. It's him again. Peeta. His hair is dark, slicked back, one of the brave ones who'd baptized himself. She hadn't heard him approach, with all the splashing and shrieking.

She doesn't know what it is about today, how they've gone from years of studious avoidance to this sudden _orbit_. As though they've been circling each other all day, almost unawares. If he'd approached her at any other time, up there, she would have frozen him out, pretended she hadn't heard until he went away. But down here, in this cavern of wonders, she's warm and soft and just right. It _is_ glorious.

"Yes," she agrees. One word, but it's a positive word, a good word, and she's just said it to him. The first time they've ever spoken. To top it off, she smiles. Just a twitch, but Peeta lights up. She'd thought he was smiling before, when she'd looked over, but that's nothing compared to this. Here, in the glow of a thousand understars, she thinks she sees Peeta Mellark for the first time.

They don't speak again (words aren't enough) and he eventually drifts back to his friends, leaving as quietly as he came, not a ripple in his wake.

* * *

Unbearable, when the foreman begins to call them to shore.

Well past midday now, and they still have to make the trek back to the surface. The earlier ebullience, the indescribable sense of camaraderie and community begins to fade as reality sets in. They have to leave this place. They'd trudge back to the surface and emerge into the light, forever changed. Forever aware that this place exists, yet unable to return. Oh, some of them might. Miners, perhaps, in stolen moments between shifts. But it won't be the same. They were free here, today. They'll never be free again. They'll graduate and start on the journey that's been ordained, years stretching endlessly ahead.

And so they drink it in, these final precious moments while they garb themselves in the trappings of their old lives. Piece by piece, weigh themselves down to the people they used to be. No longer gods, no longer nymphs or sprites or a thousand other things they'd imagined themselves to be, in this endless place, this forever space. Now they are but children, Town and Seam alike. Children doomed to repeat the sins of their forefathers.

Perhaps something hears their cry, hears their prayers, for there's a murmur of something new, an awakening somewhere deep in the earth. It starts out as a feeling, a tingling in the marrow of their bones. The miners and foreman grow instantly alert. Katniss feels it, too, through her bare feet against the warm rock. She's stepped off to one side, segmented again, slipping back in to her dress, which chafes at her wet undergarments.

"Clip in!" the foreman calls, it's probably nothing, but the kids already scurry like ants on an upturned anthill, panicking every which way. Clipping in at random until they're one tangled web. The lights from their helmets strobe crazily, the refraction blinding all of them, a macabre dance hall like you sometimes see on Capitol TV.

At the periphery, Katniss stuffs on her boots, not even bothering to lace them. She scrabbles for her pack, her hat. Where's her clip she can't find her clip.

They have seismic detectors galore for this type of thing, scattered throughout District 12, consolidated around the mine itself like vultures. But they're not always enough. Somewhere above, a machine in the Museum is going crazy. A relic, but they were told it still works. They haven't needed it in years, not so much as a tremor in this region, but now it's probably jerking colored lines like it's having a seizure

The foreman and the miners are everywhere, unclipping, slinging kids by their waists, tossing them like bags of flour in the direction of the beckoning tunnel, with its reinforced beams and 100% safety guaranteed. Out here, beneath a sky of shivering crystals, they are woefully, wonderfully fragile.

The team of miners and their foreman become the world's most efficient assembly line, motivated by mayhem, pursued by deadly purpose. They're down to a final clump of Townies or Seam, who can tell.

"Go go go!" the foreman calls to his men.

Katniss stumbles toward them, boots and helmet flopping. She's used to running through a forest of leaves, not rocks. Her toe catches a crevice, and she and her helmet go flying. Something heavy hits the back of her head, a warning. She's dazed, scrabbling again for her helmet, teetering like a turtle shell.

Faces hover like moons in the dim light of the shaft, safety beckoning. They've seen her, this final straggler, the last to arrive, the last to leave. The foreman reaches out his hand. She wants to run toward him, needs to run toward him, but before she can take another step, something plows into her, steals her breath, and she tumbles back. A stalagmite the size of her torso lands where she should have been.

The stars fall.


	2. Chapter 2

Distantly, Katniss can hear voices. _Marco_, someone calls, standard procedure, a hundred miles away. They can't touch her. But there's something she's supposed to do.

_Marco_, they call again. Nearby crystal vibrates with the sound.

"Polo," she answers, too weak, then starts to cough. Her lungs burn with the coal spice. The cough echoes and echoes, too long, until she realizes that it's not only her she's hearing.

Rocks stir and slip somewhere in the darkness. Her gaze swings to illuminate the area. Everywhere she looks, she sees grotesque shapes, crystalline silhouettes that masquerade as people, broken and shattered.

Movement, a frond waves, something with five digits. She picks her way toward it, this grasping tentacle, and then reaches out. Its grip is warm and firm and like a spark. It's a hand, an arm, and now a head, once cleansed by their excursion in the lake, caked anew in grime. And a face she'd know anywhere.

"Hey, Katniss," Peeta says. He's calm, like they've just run into each other in the halls at school. Too calm, given that he's covered in a blanket of rocks and shards, his other arm and legs pinned and unmoving, distorted, dark shapes through crystal.

She doesn't even know where to start, this impossible tangle of limbs.

From somewhere below, the earth warns. There's no time to think, no time to consider this rock or that, this tenuous tumble. Carefully, so carefully, she begins to shove and shift the rubble, first this plank, then the next. He helps with his good arm where he can, but his leverage is limited. As she frees his left side, he sucks in a breath. Rock shivers and hisses as he's unearthed, his right leg also pulling free.

With a bit of help, he gets to his knees, then, miraculously, his feet.

"Can you walk?" He seems unsteady. Everything around them is unsteady, nothing where it's supposed to be.

"I think so. Yeah."

"We need to move," she says, already hunting, scanning. "See if there's another way out of here." First rule of thumb when there's a cave-in. Keep moving, try to find a ventilation shaft, get away from the unstable area if you can. And this, this is the most unstable area of all, water dripping for thousands of years, forever straining to reach the earth below. "Do you have your pack?" Hers is lost, likely pinioned beneath the giant spear that had been aimed for her head.

Peeta forages in the rubble, lifting aside crystals like logs, showing his strength. She remembers seeing him unloading supplies with his brothers. He puts those skills to good use now, knowing exactly how to lift and swing with the greatest leverage. After a few more precious minutes, he procures his pack, and the risk becomes worth it.

"Great," she says tightly, continuing to survey the area in long sweeps. "Let's go."

He follows her lead, picking their way across a minefield of loose rock, every step a gamble. They gingerly skirt the alluvial fan of rubble that blocks their former entrance, then continue along the curved wall, hunting for another way out.

"There," he calls, spying it before she does. An access. It's a much smaller shaft, clearly intended as an emergency hatch, or perhaps the crude beginnings of another crucial artery like the one that had brought them here. Major find like this, they were bound to want to network it. Always more than one way in and out, another cardinal rule.

Katniss eyes the jagged rend in the wall. It's rough, a mere fissure, carved quick and dirty, not even enough room yet to stand up straight.

"Let's clip in," she says. "Looks a bit steep."

"Want me to go first?"

"No, I need you behind, in case I slip. You'd barrel me over." She's sturdy, yes, but safer to put the lighter one up front.

He mock bows. "Ladies first." He steps in after her, and they start up. Soon, they're climbing quickly, making great time despite the narrow confines. "Funny," he pants from a few paces back. "Never thought I'd find our mining lessons so practical." The sentiment mirrors her thoughts from earlier. And why should he? He's the Baker's son.

He doesn't even have to ask why she knows so much. Everyone knows about her father, Gale's father, too many fathers and mothers. The funeral was the biggest one the District had ever seen. The Mayor himself officiated. She doesn't remember what he said.

After that day, the lessons taught in school, the endless focus on mine safety, it all suddenly mattered. Katniss couldn't have stopped listening had she tried. She soaked it in and thought: Was that it? Was that what killed him? A spark from the elevator, as it swung and clipped an outcrop? They'd never know.

"Hurry," she says. "We need to get to the main tunnel before—"

No warning this time, the earth bucks. Katniss falls to one hip and bounces, backslides for a few feet, until she jams her boots into either side of the rough wall. She braces herself against Peeta's answering jolt at the end of the rope.

"Go!" he calls, already scrabbling back to his feet. They stagger forward, pursued by the hiss of rock and dirt dislodging in their wake. Like they're being herded, rats in a maze.

They're not going to make it. Grit rains, swarms their eyes, chokes their throats, making it nearly impossible to see, to breathe, to find purchase. Belatedly, Katniss considers a horrifying thought—perhaps this shaft had been dug from the cave itself, never finished. Any moment now, she could run smack into a barrier, the terminal point. Peeta would plow into her and that would be it. They'd be buried alive, with only a few minutes of air left…

The access widens, vomiting them into a bisecting tunnel. Peeta lands heavily on her, followed immediately by a tidal wave of choking earth and dust. For a few long moments, the dirt streams free, submerging them. She can't move, can't scream.

Then Peeta shifts, pressing up hard and somehow lifts free, his body a shield against the onslaught, which has become lethargic now, sated. She slides from under him, pulling first one leg, then the other, and then she's out, quickly reaching back to help extract him from the muck, which has him to the waist.

When he's finally extricated, they stand for a moment and just breathe, brushing detritus from their face, their clothes. Katniss swipes crumbs from her eyes and looks up to find Peeta bent over, hands on his knees, pale and panting.

"Keep moving," she gasps to him, and he nods tightly. From here, they can see that the tunnel ahead, visible just beyond the landslide, dead-ends in a pocket picked clean of clinging coal. Their only hope is to retrace the vein to its source. "This way."

She leads them onward, maintaining the same punishing pace as before, although the earth seems to have quieted now, returning to its former slumber. Peeta struggles to keep up, his gait and breath uneven, him having taken the brunt of both cave-ins.

Abruptly, she stops. She can feel Peeta behind her, drawing close in the narrow space.

"What is it?"

They've come to a fork. Two seemingly identical holes gape, like eyes in a skull. There are lines chicken-scratched into the cross beam, numbers perhaps, but they mean nothing to the uninitiated.

On instinct, she goes right.

For a few meters, it seems like the wrong choice. The walls close in again. Katniss is gasping, afraid any moment that they'll be hit by another aftershock, a ripple in the water. She considers calling it off, telling Peeta that they need to back out, this route is going nowhere, the earth is eating them alive, when the tunnel constricts a final time and then spits her out into a small cave.

Gratefully, her spine unfurls to its full height. When she spreads her arms wide, a bird, she can't touch the walls. An old loading zone. Long abandoned, by the looks of it. But roomy. And ventilated, by the smell of it. Katniss scouts back to its far end, confirming that, aside from a few deeper forays into the rock, coal picked and nearly licked clean, the shaft dead-ends here. Nowhere to go but back.

"Rest here for a bit," she orders. The ceiling above is reinforced with beams, and it's already survived two tremors. It's not much, a far cry from the underground lake, but it's better than the alternative. From her hazy recollection of the map, the one featured so prominently yet uselessly at the Museum, there are only so many pockets like this, criss-crossed with shafts.

Peeta struggles free of his pack and straightens in relief. He's filthy, as she surely is, christened again in coal after their brief respite at the lake. The smudge on his face makes his eyes a ghostly blue.

"So I guess we wait," he says.

She nods, a slight dip of her chin but doesn't look at him. "We wait."

Without discussing it, they settle in to opposite ends of their little cave. Katniss angles herself so he's not quite in her eye line. She's irritated by how calm he is, almost cheery, rooting about in his pack. He doesn't understand yet, was probably doodling in his notebook during this particular lecture. The one she absorbed with rapt attention as the teacher described the best ways to survive down in the mines if, for example, there's a cave-in.

This is how it will go: It will take them at least twenty-four hours to drill a bore hole. They'll target the cave of wonders. Odds are that the two lost kids have decided to take their chances near water. She'd responded a weak _Polo_; perhaps they'd heard it or the subsequent coughing. Of course, they don't know that she and Peeta are no longer in the cave. They can't know this, can't know how the stalactites swung like pendulums.

So they'll spend a fruitless day finding that out. Maybe an extra hour or two calling _Marco_, listening for an answering _Polo_ that will never come. At that point, they'll have a decision to make. They won't know why Katniss and Peeta aren't answering. So they'll have to decide—probably the Mayor—if it's worth expending valuable time and resources to try another bore hole.

Say they do, say they decide the lives of two children, and one from the Seam besides, are worth the trouble. Likely with some persuasion from Peeta's mother and maybe Gale. Gale will tell them that he knows what she'll do, he knows how she thinks but, for once, he'll be completely dead wrong. Because she didn't do what she should have done, stay near the water, find shelter, and hope for the best. He doesn't know about the second cave-in.

So they'll try another bore hole, another fruitless round of Marco / Polo. Another wasted day costing the District precious, precious time it can't afford. Maybe they'll decide to try this very loading zone, or somewhere else along the arteries she and Peeta can reach. But there's probably another, more likely candidate. The map, on the wall of the Museum, is of spaghetti. They've been mining this area for nearly a hundred years.

This, then, is how they'll die. Their would-be rescuers putting pins on a map with their eyes closed. And this is actually the most promising scenario. Katniss can image other scenarios in which their chances of survival are equally zero.

Mines could have caved in across the mountain, leaving pockets of miners that they'd triage based on who's down there, position, size of family, etc. If the other seniors were also trapped, somewhere on the trek back to Grand Central, they'd go after them first. She and Peeta are but two.

Katniss stands and begins to pace, five steps forward, five steps back, thoughts snarling, fear rising, boiling over until she snaps, "You shouldn't be here." Peeta freezes from where he's been intent at his feet, scratching something in the dirt with the edge of a rock. But he ignores her jibe, doesn't even look up. His jaw twitches, and then he just renews his efforts. "What are you even doing?" Her voice grates, harsh.

"I'm drawing a map."

It's the last thing she'd expected him to say. "Of what?"

"Of the mines. Trying to figure out where we are. If there might be another way out."

She stares at him. Here she is, wallowing in hypotheticals and doomsday scenarios, and he's already trying to save her. Again.

"Can I see?"

This time, he looks up. "Please. I'm hoping you can help me remember."

She steps gingerly around the post that separates them, careful not to jostle it. Stands above his map for a moment, squinting at it upside down. Then she swivels to kneel next to him. Uncomfortably close, but she needs to see.

And she thought Townies don't pay attention. But she should know by now. Peeta isn't just any Townie.

He's recreated the map that's on display in the Museum. The one that they've stood in front of, year after year, while a voice like syrup tells them about this pride of Panem, the twelfth world wonder.

"I think we're here," he points to one of the ovals. "And that fork we came to. It could be here or here. Mostly I just remember that the various loading zones made a rabbit."

She frowns, not sure what he means. The lines in the dirt are clear but crude, his only utensil a rock. He's clearly seeing more in his mind's eye than she is. She cocks her head and then she understands, the oblong circles of the various loading zones coalesce with the torso of Grand Central to form a simple rabbit with two ears, fat feet, and a stubby tail.

"Rabbits don't have five feet." She points. "So if we head back to that fork, the other shaft might eventually double back to Grand Central."

"One shaft for loading, one for unloading," he quotes, likely from the foreman's speech that she missed. Briefly, she thinks of Gale. She wonders if he already knows what's happened. Or if he's still toiling down in the dark deep, and he'll find out when he comes up for air.

Then another thought strikes her. Three cave-ins up here, so much closer to the surface, there could have easily been more, down there. Deepest. A third scenario, the worst.

They have to decide. Leave the relative safety of the loading zone, brave that second fork, see where it takes them. Katniss is quiet for a long moment, listening like she does in the forest when her prey is near. Whatever they awakened down deep, by cavorting in that cave, it's finally still. She can't feel it anymore, the buzz in her bones.

"It's worth a short," she says. "Let's move."

So they gather up his pack, unwilling to part from it, and, with a fortifying breath, squeeze back through the crevasse.

Where they'd turned right, they now turn left. Almost immediately, the shaft widens and heads up. The panic that's pressed on Katniss' chest begins to ease, just slightly. Up is good. Up is hope. They increase their pace, forgetting the stifling heat and the first pangs of hunger and thirst. Everyone had been too busy swimming, they hadn't thought to eat. She fumbles in her skirts, glad to see that her protein bar is still there. Crumbled, but edible. With the one in the pack, that makes two.

Distracted, Katniss almost plows into Peeta. He's stopped short, his broad back blocking her view of what's beyond. But she can already see it in his shoulders.

"Another one," he confirms. She taps his shoulder once, a signal, and he steps around her, an awkward little dance. _We call it the two-step_, Gale might say. She shines her light on a jumble of rubble, similar to the one that had cut them off from the rest of the group. Just as sudden, just as devastating, just as final.

They'd followed Peeta's rabbit trail, but it led to nowhere. He was probably right, with his eye for detail. This fork probably led back to Grand Central, she can feel it. Probably, but they'll never know.

Peeta's already moving, his clear eyes missing nothing. "The rubble seems a bit more loose here. Maybe we can dig our way through."

Maybe, but they both know it's a bad idea. Yet another cardinal rule of cave-ins: Don't try to dig your way through. The ground is already unstable, rocks roiling and shifting like a mouthful of loose teeth. One wrong move, and you're likely to bury yourself alive.

Despite her earlier jab about Townies, she knows Peeta knows this. They both know it. But if his map was right, then there's no other way out. The little cave they found themselves in doesn't connect back to the surface in any other way.

So Peeta just turns and hefts one of the smaller boulders, pulling it to his shoulder like a sack of flour. There's nowhere to put it, not really, but he looks around anyway. Katniss is about to join him, start piecing together a plan for how to stack the rubble in a way that will still allow them to back out if need be, when she smells something, like a fresh kill in the woods. A smell she knows well.

"Peeta," she says. "Stop."

"What is it?" He grunts, lowering the boulder carefully to the side.

"Turn around."

He does as she asks, head cocked. Methodically, she directs her headlamp at him in long sweeps, first his head, neck, torso, arms, then…

"Your leg."

He looks down, looks to where she's pointing the light. And where she's pointing is a slick sheen on his clothes, and not just of sweat. Peeta's left leg is drenched in it. The leg he's been favoring, the cause of his uneven gait.

Blood. She'd smelled blood. Animal and human, it all smells the same.

"Oh," Peeta says. He looks up at her, and then it's like time moves like molasses, every blink of his eyes as the impulses reach his brain. His irises roll up up up, until all she can see is white, and he crumples where he stands. She's too slow, diving forward to scrape her knees.

There's a crack, and his headlamp winks out.

"Peeta," she calls, slapping at his face. He needs to wake up. He _must_ wake up.

"Oh," he says again, weak but this time with wonder. She's so very close, half-draped on him, her face inches from his. She can feel the rise and fall of his chest.

She pulls back, gives him space to breathe. He looks at her for a long moment until the cloud in his eyes clears. Then he glances down toward his leg, face pinched in pain.

"Guess it's worse than I thought. It caught on something, back in the cave, when you were pulling me out." So many jagged edges. Her own arms and legs are criss-crossed, like the time she and Gale braved the briars in the woods. But hers are shallow cuts like fingernails, not like this.

She's heard of these things, adrenaline keeping you going for longer than you should. She needs to get him back to the loading zone, where there's space for him to lie down, space for her to take a look and do what needs to be done.

"You should have said something." She's snapping at him again, a tendency when she's worried. Or more than worried.

Gale usually snaps right back, and they clash. But Peeta just looks at her again, eyes soft. "I'm sorry. I thought it was just a scratch. Didn't seem…important, given everything."

He's doing it again, that thing where he's looking at her like she's the only thing he sees. She turns away, can't bask in the glory of that gaze.

"We need to get back to the zone." Still terse.

She helps him to his feet, doesn't mind where he grips her forearm, then shoulder. Then he's standing, balancing weight on his good leg. She can hear him breathing. He's looking vaguely down at the ground, but not at his leg no, most certainly not at his leg, brow furrowed as though he's trying to do math in his head.

"Can you walk?"

"I…" He shifts some weight, blanches.

It's answer enough. In return, she just shoulders on his pack and braces her other arm around him. Together, they lurch forward.

When there's enough room for them to walk side-by-side, it's almost manageable. She gets a bit of a respite when Peeta hops on his good leg. But when the walls force them down to single file, she nearly doubles over with the weight of him on her back. He's a lot heavier than he looks. She's gasping, chanting, "Almost there, almost there."

He says nothing, just focuses on moving forward. One foot, drag. One foot, drag.

Somehow, they tumble back to the zone. Peeta crawls himself to the little hollow he'd settled into earlier, decimating his map.

"Home sweet home," he says. His face is pale, alien in the light of her headlamp, shadows in the wrong places. His eyes rove restlessly, not quite focusing on her face. She's seen this before, in the faces of men stretched out on her dining room table, before she retreats to her room. Not all of them survived.

She wishes, now, that she'd stayed in the room. That she'd watched, like Prim. The mere glimpses she's seen, they might not be enough. But she has to try.

She starts with his boots, reaching to unlace them, so much bigger than her own. Pulls off one, then the next, setting them neatly out of the way, leaving his socks on in case he gets cold.

He's watching her now. It's unnerving, the way he looks at her. The way he's always looked at her.

She pauses, but there's no easy way to say this. "I need to take off your pants."

He nods and tries to help, fingers fumbling at the button. But he's too disoriented and the button is too small, so after a beat she gently pries his hands away. She fumbles with the button a bit herself, unused to opening it from this angle. Then it slips free. The zipper feels slick and too loud. Like hers, his underwear are still damp from the lake.

"Not exactly the way I pictured it," Peeta mumbles, then coughs what's supposed to be a laugh, trying to make her comfortable. He watches her, always watches her as he helps again, shifting his hips so she can slip the pants down, first off his good leg, free of his foot.

When she peels his other soaked and sticky pant free, the world wobbles. She's not like her mother, her sister. Her stomach doesn't do blood. She always looks away at this point in the Games. But this time she can't look away, can't leave the room while her mother and sister work their magic.

Instead, she holds her breath and forces herself to look at the wound objectively. Cataloguing the size (a canyon), the color (too much blood), the look of the surrounding flesh (inflamed). Despite it all, she also notices his thigh, thick with muscle, so very different from her own.

Peeta's watching her closely. "It's bad, isn't it?" He says, almost cheerful, like it's an inside joke.

"You're going to be fine," she grits, rote, what Mother always says. Sans the warm bedside demeanor.

And he will be fine. She'll make him fine. Her fingers fumble at her skirt until she finds a worn area. The fabric is so threadbare that it doesn't take much to work her fingers in and yank.

Peeta's muttering something now about girls ripping their clothes off, but he's trembling with fatigue or something else and his words are a bit soft and she's not quite sure that what he said even makes sense. This is the point where Mother would say, _he's going in to shock_, and then she'd bustle about grabbing this vial or that. But all Katniss can do is tie her strip of skirt around his thigh, drawing it tight above the slash, hoping it will be enough.

Peeta's eyes are too wide for his face, pupils lumps of coal. Gaze firmly on her face, as if she's his anchor. He's trusting her. He's looking up to her, believing somehow that she can save him from this.

But she's done all she can for him, all she knows how to do. Still, she sits with him for a long while, giving him only a few sips from a canteen that's already dangerously low. They'd had enough water for a few hours, less than a day.

Now, they wait.

Humans can go weeks without food, Katniss knows this better than most. She's used to the hollow in her belly, although she doubts Peeta has gone hungry a day in his life. Not his fault, just reality. For both of them, the thirst will be new. The thirst will be the real problem. In the forest, she's always able to find moisture, in the hidden places her father taught her about. Down here, they're bone dry. To top it off, Peeta's leg. She doesn't know how quickly infection spreads. Mother or Prim would know, but they're too far away.

So it's a race. A race between the thirst, the infection, and their would-be rescuers. _Gale_, she thinks. He's heard by now, likely leading the search party himself, digging with his bare hands if he has to. If he's able. If he's not buried somewhere in the deep, like them. In twenty-four hours, she'll get her first clue.

* * *

She spends most of her "day" at the smaller cave-in, loading up their helmets and dumping the debris further down the tunnel. Ironic, that something that happened in a few seconds might take her a few weeks to clear out. And that's assuming she even can. In brief spurts of her headlamp (an attempt to conserve power), she sees bigger boulders that squat like hefty mutts, taunting her. She still has Peeta's rock hammer, but it's yet to make a dent.

Perhaps if Peeta himself were at full strength, they'd have a chance. But her only hope now is to clear out enough of the detritus around the larger pieces that she can maybe slip her way through the interstices, get some help.

It's a wisp of a chance, but it's the only one they have. It's been more than twenty-four hours now, and not a whisper from the surface. The first attempt has failed.

When she grows too tired to move her arms, she picks her way back to Peeta. They have their meager meal—a bite of the bar, a sip of the water—and then they rest. When Peeta's lucid, like he is in the beginning, they talk.

Their conversation ebbs and flows. Time means nothing here in the forever dark, so she's not quite sure how long they go between rounds. At first, Peeta asks her little things, like what's her favorite color and what subject she likes best in school. She finds out that he likes the color of sunset and that his favorite class is science, mostly because he gets to draw the diagrams. She can see that, him always doodling in the margins.

Then, easy topics exhausted, they move on to other things. When she brings back a piece of mineral rough from her dig site, she tells him about how her father used to bring back colored crystals for his girls, rejects from the mines. She and Prim still have a row of rough lining the windowsill in their bedroom, casting fanciful lights and colors throughout the day, when the sun hits them just right. _Faeries_, Father used to call the resulting prisms on the ceiling, on the bed, sometimes even on their faces.

Peeta asks, "Can I have it?" She drops the rough into his waiting palm. He clutches it until he falls into fitful sleep.

Later, Peeta tells her what his own father told him once, on the first day of school. That when her father sang, even the birds stopped to listen. It's strangely moving, the idea that the folks in the Town knew about her father, that he sang somewhere they could hear, not just in the coal mines. Then Peeta tells the other part of that story, about his father and her mother and at first she can't even believe it but then. Then she kinda can. Mother comes with her and Prim to the Bakery sometimes, usually only on holidays, and she almost smiles.

"I remember the day when my dad let me bake my very own cake." He was seven, maybe eight, and so very proud. Too excited to sleep, so he got up before the sun and crept down to the kitchens in the dark, arranging his ingredients so very quietly, so very neatly, doling them out bit by painstaking bit. Then he'd waited, nose glued to the oven, until his Father, yawning, had to shoo him along to his other chores.

Of course, he'd ended up making a rookie mistake. You forget every ingredient at least once. Some make more of a difference than others, like if you leave out the vanilla only the Mayor's wife might notice. "But I'd forgotten the eggs. That, you notice." The cake came out runny, a pile of goop. His brothers had teased him mercilessly for weeks.

"It's probably why I ended up a better baker than all of them. All that motivation."

There are some topics they avoid. She never mentions Gale. He never alludes to his mother, not once. And, of course, they never mention the day with the bread.

More hours pass. She counts time by Peeta's short, choppy breaths.

* * *

"Peeta," Katniss says, the first time either of them has spoken in hours, maybe half a day. Today she had to rest, the bones in her arms aching, shaking under their unnatural strain. She couldn't even hold their helmets, empty. At first, Peeta seemed reanimated by her company, peppering her with questions like he does, even silly ones. But he's been quiet now for a while. Too long.

"Peeta," she says again. "Bake me a cake."

He remains quiet, too quiet, and she thinks maybe he's asleep. Or worse. It could happen any time now.

But then he whispers, "I've always wanted to bake you a cake." As the hours bleed in to days, he's started saying things like this, things that make her shiver somewhere inside. "Your sister," he coughs, "she likes the cookies. But you. You, I could see a triple-layer double fudge cake. This imposing monolith on the outside, impossible to tell what lies beneath. But when you open it up, you get to the good part, the gooey, molten center. Melt on your tongue good. The best cake you've ever had." She feels warm inside now, her head lolling toward him on its pillow of rock.

So he bakes her this cake. In a whisper at first, but then stronger and stronger, the most animated she's heard him in days, as though the imaginary food gives him strength.

She remembers this, the fantasizing about food. She and Gale used to do it, lying on their backs at their knoll, the one that looks out into the valley, seeing food in the clouds. They'd remind each other of what bread tasted like, bacon from the fattest of pigs, the unbelievable snap and sweetness of biting into an apple. "Cheese buns," Katniss would moan, and Gale would just laugh. He never understood her thing for cheese buns, how, golden and hot, they dissolve on your tongue.

His earlier anecdote to the contrary, Peeta is a _magnificent_ baker. She can see it in the way he arranges his ingredients, so neatly, so elegantly, everything within reach in the exact order he'll need them, his flour and salt and sugar.

She can see it in the way he sifts the flour with a flick of the wrist just _so_, leveling it carefully, one, two, three, four. Saying the numbers aloud so he doesn't lose count. He's making her a big cake, the biggest. A monolithic monument of a cake.

Sifting in the other dry ingredients, creaming the wet—the trick is to make sure the butter is so soft soft but not too soft, you don't want it to ooze—pause for a cough—adding the eggs last. Fresh from the coop, one crack, two crack, three crack, four. Pour the batter into the mold, squeeze in the chocolate, a final flourish. Sometimes, with his chocolate pen, he draws a face. Other times, a leaf. Today, for her, he draws a flower, shakes the pan to settle. Then bake in the rosy glow of the ovens for exactly twenty three and a half minutes, not a second more, you'd best watch so close so very close.

Together, they watch his creation rise before their very eyes. Now, time for the icing, he says, and presents her with an array of options with fancy names like buttercream and fondant and fudge.

Chocolate, she breathes.

An excellent choice. Impeccable taste.

Fast forward to the good part, where the cake emerges, cools, and he slathers it with the fudge.

"And now," he says, "it's time to taste." He's energized, all this talk of food, his passion. He can do anything right now, like stand up and do a jig or swim through rock like it's water. Instead, he settles for lifting his right arm, balancing a fork, then swoops it down down to scoop out the delicate tip of a decadent wedge. "Ladies first."

And then he reaches up up and sticks his pointer finger in her mouth. Surprised, Katniss grips his wrist loosely, helping him reach. Her eyes flutter closed, and she licks a long, languorous lick, until his finger emerges with a puff. Impossibly, he tastes like cinnamon.

"Oh," he breathes. His finger hovers at her face, her lips for a moment, hot on her skin, then descends. All this baking has exhausted him, energy drained, this final gift that he can give. When his hand drops, so does hers, and she keeps her fingers tangled loosely with his, willing him some of her strength.

She can feel his smile.

They grow hungrier, all this talk of eggs and chocolate, so Katniss crumbles up the last bit of the protein bar, the bits they'd been saving. The one that was intended to get them through a few hours, they've rationed it into a few days. Now it's all gone, and Katniss lets Peeta lick her palm for every last crumb. They sip at the canteen until it, too, is empty.

When the water runs dry, so do their words, the mechanics of speaking with their lips, teeth, and tongue becoming too difficult, jaws welding shut. Sometimes Katniss flicks on the headlamp, dimming now, and they just look at each other, heads lolling loosely on their necks, hands reaching, Peeta with eyes foggy from fever, lips so cracked they're bloody, and him licking it away because it's wet.

Katniss dreams of the underground lake, overflowing, enough water to last a lifetime, separated from them by only a few meters of rock. She thinks, sometimes, that she can smell it, that she can hear water dripping steadily somewhere, just out of reach. It goes _drip drip drip_.

Do you hear that, Peeta? Do you hear it?

She doesn't know what it is. Maybe it's raining on the surface, water percolating through the porous soil. Rain, she can scarcely imagine it.

He can't hear anything past the chattering of his own teeth.

When Peeta sleeps, fitful like a puppy, she forces herself up, keeping herself moving, scouring the nearby tunnels for any hint of moisture, even a sheen down the wall. She puts pebbles in their mouths, in the off chance that their bodies can absorb liquid, any liquid.

Try as she might, pacing an endless loop from one cave-in to the other, she can't find the source of that elusive _drip drip drip_. Sounds are misleading down here, acoustics nefarious. Over here, it's closer, over here more distant but no matter where she stands, no matter where she puts her ear, she gets no closer.

She half-heartedly tries to dig through the other cave-in, the one that leads back to the lake, which she now thinks she dreamed. It couldn't be real. Nothing is real anymore. There's no cave. There's no lake.

But she's too weak now to lift all but the smallest of rocks. And Peeta's too weak to lift his own hand.

_Drip drip drip_, goes the water.

It's torture, slowing driving her mad.

_Drip drip drip_.

She listens to it for hours, maybe days. Once, she screams, clutching at her head, trying to stuff her fingers into her ears so she can't hear it anymore. Make it stop please make it stop.

Peeta stirs but does not wake. He's beyond her screams.

She beats her head against the floor until she knows no more.

* * *

She wakes to the sound of her name, the sibilant hiss of the _ss_. It reverberates in the inky black, fading echoes like maybe it's not the first time he's had to say it. Her head feels three times too big, so heavy she can hardly lift it. She's on her stomach, head craned impossibly. There's something caked across one eye. Her skin pulls when she at last cracks the lid.

For a heart-stopping moment, she can't find the lamp. She'd left it up near her head, but she must have bumped it away in restless sleep. Her clawing fingers close on it at last, farther than she expected. She clicks it on, sees a brief flash of Peeta's back before she shuts it off again.

As she scoots toward him, she can hear him panting, shivering. She flicks on the weak light, needing to see. He's shaking, clutching himself as though he's cold, despite the heat, thick like a blanket. He's drenched and too terribly pale.

And he's seen her, too.

"Your head," he says, alarmed, trying to reach for her, she guesses, but his fingers merely tremble near her arm. She must look frightful, caked blood down her face, head wound and all.

"It's fine," she says. "Just a scratch." This time, he doesn't pick up on her dry humor, her subtle jab.

"Katniss," he says again, serious. "I need to tell you something."

"Shh," she soothes, pushing the hair out of his eyes. "We can talk later."

"There is no later."

"Don't say that."

"I'm dying, in my blood. I know what blood poison is. I can feel it, crawling in veins like worms." It's the fever, he's burning up with it, talking so crazy, this babble. "But I don't want to die without telling you. Without you knowing the truth."

She plays along. "The truth about what?"

"You."

"Peeta, rest. Please," she's desperate. She doesn't want to hear this, this deathbed confession.

"No," he says. "_No_. I have to tell you. I have to tell you the truth." She doesn't know if she wants to hear it, if she can hear it.

He's undeterred. He's learned already not to take her no for an answer. "I remember the first day I saw you. It was the first day of school. You were an angel then, an angel with a scowl. You stalked in there like us mere mortals were beneath you. But then you stood on that stool and sang us the Valley song, and you took us to another place."

She hadn't known any better, then. She was still proud of her daddy and the songs he taught her. She'd been so young.

He continues, "That was…before." She knows what he's saying. Before her father died, before she realized what it was like, being from the Seam. "But I watched you since then, every day. At school. From our upstairs window, when you traded with my father. For twelve years, I've been trying to work up the courage to talk to you. This felt like my last chance, this last week of school. No Prim and no Gale and, what are the odds, no Madge. Nowhere for you to go."

"Well, this has just worked out nicely." She's deflecting, the way she does with Gale when he starts talking about kids or proposals.

"In a way, yes. If I have to die, I'm glad to die for you. I'm glad we've talked. And I'm glad you know, now, why I would do it."

_Do it_, he says, and for a moment she doesn't know what he means. But then she thinks back to earlier, so long ago, when she'd snapped at him. _You shouldn't be here_. And he really shouldn't. His had been one of the pale moon faces, already in the safety of the tunnel, helping the miners get his classmates back through.

When the sky had fallen, she remembers something hitting her, bowling her over, and not just a rock. He'd thrown himself from the safety of the shaft, 100% guaranteed, and had kept her safe instead.

"You pushed me out of the way of that falling rock," she says. "You came back for me."

"Yes," he says. "I would never leave you," he says. She shudders to think of it, her alone down here in the dark. She would already have gone mad, she knows it. _Drip drip drip_. But the cost of her sanity is Peeta's life.

"I would do anything for you," he says.

He says it so simple, so true.

Katniss thinks of a hundred moments through the years, winking in the darkness of memory like fireflies—a door held open here, a pencil loaned there, a cookie slipped somehow below a loaf when it just so happens to be Prim's birthday. Peeta punching Glenn in the ear when he was about to rock an elevator she happened to be in. Small things, all of them. She'd thought nothing of them because that's Peeta. That's how he is, and not just with her. He holds doors open and gives pencils to all the girls, Town and Seam.

But then there were the bigger things. She thinks of a boy who braved a beating for a loaf of bread.

She thinks of the day she and Gale came to fisticuffs with a group of Townies after school. No surprise there, Town and Seam fighting, but this time, it was personal. As they were passing by, one of the boys made some offhand comment about Gale's Seam slut.

Gale struck so fast, so quick, like one of his snares. Deadly. The boy was lucky his nose was the only thing that shattered. Blood gushed, friends flushed and leapt to defend. Five against one, she didn't think so, and then she didn't think at all. She grappled onto the nearest back and used her body weight to throw one off balance and get him out of striking radius of Gale. Then his elbow swung back and she flew off, oomph, the wind knocked right out. This kid loomed, landing one good kick to her kidney…

And then he was absolutely leveled.

It was another Townie, turning on his own. Slight but broad and so impossibly quick. Katniss watched, elbows propping her up, while Gale and the Townie wiped the floor with those guys. Only after the other boys slunk away, tails between legs, did she recognize who it was. Her savior.

It was him.

Peeta Mellark.

His gaze was a laser, as it had been a few years before, through the rain. This time, there was no rain. Nothing separating them except a few steps and an extended palm. She could see it in his eyes, now soft, now steel. He took a breath and then took those steps. He extended his hand…

Gale was an eclipse. "You okay?" And he was the one who helped her to her feet. He was the one who probed gently at her side, cupped her bruised cheek, the one she allowed to touch her, like she never did. But when his eyes, his hands became uncomfortable, she looked past to see Peeta, limping away. They hadn't even spoken. Not even a thank you.

"Gale," was all she said. He followed her gaze, then nodded. Slow, reluctant, but he nodded. Later that week, Gale left the Baker a string of plump rabbits.

It's wasn't enough—it will never be enough—but it was a start.

"Anything," Peeta repeats, bringing her back to him, back to this. This present day (night) where Peeta has saved her, yet again, and now lies broken and bleeding before her, expecting nothing, asking for nothing. She wants to save him, this boy-turned-man whose life seems inextricably bound to her own. Perhaps he's been meant for this all along, to sacrifice himself for her.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asks.

He looks at her for a long moment, lids heavy, cheeks haggard. His lips part, but it's a while before they make a sound. "Someday," he whispers at last, "I'd like to watch you hunt. It's only fair, what with me baking you a cake."

"Deal," she laughs, a wheeze, and then she cries, but she has no tears. He coughs along with her. It doesn't stop, a hacking miner's cough, spice in his lungs. He spits.

"Can you sing?" His voice is reverent, his voice is hope, his voice is unconditional.

She's not sure she can sing, what with her mouth and jaw having fossilized, fused into the surrounding rock. But sing she does, if that's what you can call it, although her voice is gravel, likely a far cry from the youthful falsetto of Peeta's memory.

First the Valley song, because she wants to make his eyes shine. Then other songs, songs she hasn't thought of since before her father died. Songs he used to sing in the woods, or to help his daughters go to sleep.

Like Peeta had when he baked his cake, Katniss feels herself reviving.

There's a new canary in this coal mine.

When she's sung all the songs she knows, and a few more besides, she trails off, a final warble, and finds Peeta with his eyes closed. She's sung him to sleep. He's still and peaceful, chest still rising and falling. Shallow but steady.

"Peeta," she whispers in his ear, a caress. "I love you."

But he can't hear.


	3. Chapter 3

She dreams.

This time there's nothing between her and the fall, no elevator like a tin can on a string, just a pit in the earth. She takes one step and falls.

Katniss swims to consciousness. It's getting harder and harder to open her eyes, harder to understand the difference between closed and open. Her bones have all but fossilized, petrified, fused to the stone beneath her and around her and now within her.

Something woke her, some new noise.

It's not Peeta. He's silent as the grave. She drags herself to him, cranes her ear over his mouth to make sure he's still breathing, that little rasp of life. Shallower still, and not quite as steady.

Not long now.

Yet still, something woke her.

Or perhaps the absence of something. Pushing herself up, she realizes she can't hear the dripping any more. It's gone, like it never was. Miner's madness, perhaps, she's heard of such a thing.

In its place is a new sound, a sound she's strained, hoped to hear for days. Steady, steady, like the earth churns. A distant drill? But no, it's almost soft, organic. And it's not distant, not distant at all. It's close, too close. And there's a smell, unlike anything Katniss has ever smelled, something moist and damp.

There's something in these tunnels.

Something comes and then that something is here. She can sense it, a presence pressing on her awareness, a slurp and snuffle in the dark, seeking. Something slow. Something large. Something wicked this way comes.

She claws for the lamp, frantic, but it won't ignite, faded with Peeta. She curses, rattling it and flicking it on off on off. Still nothing, not even a feeble attempt to expose whatever new horror is blocking their only exit.

Her clatter stills. She grips the lamp like a bludgeon and strains to hear. The newfound silence is agony. She doesn't know what's worse—to see or not to see. Her imagination paints a nightmare, something creeping and coming, so quiet and close.

"Please," she prays.

As if in answer, two lights wink on, dead ahead. For a beat, she sees headlamps, Gale has come, they're saved. But that's what she wants to see and that's not what she's seeing, these two steady beacons, like the wolves that sometimes visit her and Gale in the forest gloom, eyes reflecting a fire.

_Eyes_.

Eyes, a rising horror, for that's exactly what these are. Perfectly symmetrical, twitching and focusing, too widely spaced to be human or any animal she's ever seen. This is what Gale had warned her about, in their stolen conversation a lifetime ago. Monsters that dally in the dark, sounds that should never be explored.

She must be dreaming, this nightmare. Lying somewhere buried under rocks, the final throes.

These eyes are lit from within, demon's eyes.

If she could, she'd scream.

She knows, somehow, that she summoned it with song, this creature from the netherworld, and it's come. Come to find them, come to snatch a nubile girl back to its lair. She's frozen, mesmerized by those hypnotic eyes, like a cobra. And here lies Peeta, prone between them, peaceful. So very fragile and unaware. If this thing strikes, Peeta will die.

_Sing_, comes a thought, unbidden.

Her singing is what brought it here. Perhaps she can sing again, lure it away from Peeta somehow, bash in its head with a rock.

So sing she does, in broken phrases, twisted by sobs and fear. _Down in the valley_. The Valley song again, but a poor imitation, a minor key. Sings hoping that Peeta will hear, from wherever he is, although this time it can't make his eyes shine. They might never shine again.

Instead, something else shines. The creature's eyes open wider, growing impossibly brighter, fixated on her mouth, exposing a bit of its own, a maw. Then a new glow creeps along more of its length, exposing a thick neck, a long body like the root of a tree. Or a soft stalagmite.

As the light creeps along more of its length, this giant worm, she realizes at last what she's seeing, what has come slithering from the depths, drawn by a canary's warble.

It's a glowworm.

She can hear her father now.

"The glowworms," he would say, "now those were the glory days. Grandfather said that we used to be able to gather coal in a fraction of the time. We would send them down for it, and they would come back and spit it out, pretty as you please, thank you and done."

Bred by one of the earliest generations after the Great War, like the jabberjays and the tracker jackers. A muttation, created for a purpose, in this case to tunnel beneath the earth. The Museum conveniently left out this detail in its glorious history of District 12. Father had told her the story himself, the old folks' tale that many of the original tunnels in the mine were forged by glowworms. They were too perfect, too symmetrical to have been the work of man. Machine, maybe, but by then those were forbidden in the Districts.

Of course, the stories don't quite say what happened, why all the glowworms disappeared. Perhaps they grew tired of the endless cycle, humanity's rapacious appetite for more more more, draining the earth dry. Muttations have also been known to mutate further or cross-pollinate, like the jabberjays into the mockingjays. Doing whatever it takes to survive.

Somehow, Katniss knows it was coal, the slow poison. She's seen what it did to her father, to Greasy Sae. She's seeing what it's already doing to Gale. She can only imagine what it did to these creatures, forced to ingest it, day after day.

Images flicker on her eyelids, like a bad projection. The coal was killing them. They were dying out, faster than their masters could make more. So they rebelled, some diving deep, down where their human masters could never go, to assume the Big Sleep. Some tunneled past the boundaries of the mine, out of the District itself. To other lands, no longer crawling with men. Where they could swim slowly, where they could raise their larvae in peace.

_Come_, she thinks. And then she realizes, as she thinks this, that she's not the one thinking it at all. The glowworm is already slithering away, from whence it came. It gave this to her, these thoughts.

It's been alone for a long, long time, called forth at last from its slumber by her siren's song.

_Come_, it says again.

"Peeta," she croaks.

The worm pauses and regards her again.

_The light dims / carapace hardens / grows cold_. A confusing medley of metaphor, a mix of human and invertebrate. No matter how her confused synapses interpret it, the worm seems to be saying that Peeta is dead.

"No!" Fear gives her limbs new strength, dropping to her knees before him, checking his neck, listening again for his breath. For a sickening moment, he's too still. Then she hears it, a wisp of life in his lungs.

"Help him," she begs, her voice breaking. She thinks frantically of their earlier journey, how she could barely support his partial weight, even with him helping. And he's too far gone to help now. "Please, I can't carry him again."

The glowworm merely watches her, its eyes clicking and whirring, inspecting her from all its angles.

Then it says, _Eat._

Katniss doesn't know what it means, but she doesn't like the sound of it. Doesn't like the confusing array of images that the word procures—cocoons, hammocks, a pea in a pod, a baby in its mother's womb.

_Eat_, it insists. It seems to be asking her for something.

When she doesn't answer, the glowworm strikes, lightning quick, knocking her back, slithering toward Peeta. And then it _eats_ him. That's the only way to describe it. It starts at his feet, slurping its way up until only Peeta's head remains, like he's swaddled in slimy, gelatinous worm.

Katniss can only watch, horrified, keening like an animal, waiting for that final moment when the worm will encase him completely, and Peeta will disappear forever. She never said _goodbye_. She never said _thank you_. He never heard that she…

But that moment never comes. The creature slurps up to Peeta's shoulders and then stops, moving back toward her now, sated and slow. It's vulgar, like a garden snake that's eaten a rodent. But as she forces herself to peer closer, overcoming her natural revulsion, she sees that Peeta is still sleeping, seemingly as safe as a baby. The worm stays still as she checks him, his pulse, his breath. His airways aren't constricted, lungs still plenty of room to breathe, somewhere in there. He's covered in mucous, but that's the least of their worries at this point.

She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. She wants to dance and scream and run. It's a miracle, a whole new world down below the one she knows.

_Come_, it says again. Gently.

This time, she follows.

The glowworm leads her back through familiar tunnels, although they look different bathed in the warm glow. They go slowly, Katniss focused on putting one boot in front of the other, the worm careful not to jostle Peeta. Back to the fork, where they painstakingly double back toward the other cave-in. She falls often. Her knees are a morass of scab and bruise and blood.

"It's no good," Katniss says aloud, shaking her head. She projects a picture of the cave-in. But the glowworm doesn't stop, doesn't even slow down. As they round the corner, to that point where she remembers Peeta had stopped, back bowed in disappointment. Back when he could still stand. Back when he could still move. Eons ago.

It's a shock, when she's expecting to see the fruits of her ill-fated labor, those boulders barring her way. Instead, she sees a clear tunnel, a perfect circle carved into the rock.

Katniss starts to laugh. She's starved and she's dangerously dehydrated and she's probably half-delirious, lying somewhere buried beneath tons of rock in a cave, dreaming these final moments. This isn't possible. This isn't real.

_Come_, the glowworm says, and leads the way.

Turns out, Peeta was wrong after all. The left fork doesn't lead back to Grand Central. It leads to somewhere better. At first, Katniss doesn't even know what she's seeing, this brightness that burns. Then she realizes it's the sun. She's seeing the effects of the sun, an impossibly bright halo of light from a perfect circle, connecting with one of the former bore shafts just wide enough for ventilation, the only reason they hadn't asphyxiated.

_Ladies first_, the glowworm tells her. An anachronism, that Peeta's words could come from that mouth.

She doesn't know how she does it. How she steps first one foot, then the other into the sharply angled shaft, the former bore hole, now wide enough for a human. She doesn't know how she scrabbles upward on hands and knees, slipping in slime, chin and elbows impacting and jarring, bracing herself on either side of the wall when it becomes impossibly more steep.

She's birthed into the light of day, so bright that she keeps her eyes screwed shut against the orange glow. She just soaks it in, the feeling of sunlight on her skin, grass under her fingertips. At any moment, she expects to be discovered, a cacophony of alarm at their sudden rebirth.

But the air is quiet and still, and Katniss can eventually open her eyes to a wide, blue sky (blue!) with clouds like bread and buns and bunnies with soft, fat feet. Turn her head, and she sees a familiar, ugly building, the Museum itself. She almost doesn't recognize it from this angle (it's designed to impress only from the front), so here they are sheltered and safe from prying eyes. Yet still only a few steps from safety. Even from here, Katniss can hear the buzz of the mine, magnified now that it's on high alert.

She turns to their savior, shielding her eyes just in time to see the glowworm poke its head and expel Peeta with a splat. Not unlike Buttercup hacking up a hairball. He seems unharmed, color in his cheeks, breathing easier than before. She kneels down and holds Peeta by one finger, then reaches out to stroke the creature's gelatinous membrane.

Thank you thank you thank you, she thinks. She feels her insides glow, the creature's version of a laugh.

_It's why I was made_. It gives her a final transmission, the clearest one yet, this time tinged with color. It shows her another cave-in. This same mine, decades ago, the humans frantic and swarming ineffectively like crazed insects, someone having upended their nest. _Release the glowworm_, the foreman commands. It's _untested untried untrue_ but this glowworm dives deep and dives straight, below the chaos and the humans with their puny little drills with the bits that keep breaking. It finds the lost soul, so alone, so fragile. It keeps the human safe, it keeps the human warm. It gives the human precious nutrients through osmosis.

The glowworm program was a rousing success. More, the Capitol demanded, until there were too many and they needed to devise new things for them to do. So this is how the humans repaid them, by making them eat of the black, the stuff that makes them sick. They were bred to eat lost humans, to save humans from themselves.

_There's a bit of your Peeta in me now_, the glowworm thinks now, so clearly, almost human. It projects an image of his smile, the one from down below, when she saw the stars in his eyes.

Then it's gone, diving back into the bowels of the earth from whence it came, filling in the tunnel behind.

* * *

Somehow, Katniss stumbles the last steps around the Museum, letting it hold her up beneath one hand, buoyed by her father, immortalized somewhere on that wall, back toward the waiting arms of half the District. A great cry goes up when the first person spots her, precarious on fawn legs. She's gone too long without food, without drink, and she's done.

"Peeta," she tries to say, more of a groan, pointing to where she left him, and then she falls. She doesn't remember hitting the ground.

* * *

Now there is light. Warm and impossible on her face.

She wakes, shooting up and groping for her bearings. The spot next to her is cool and empty beneath her grasping hands. No helmet, no Peeta, nowhere, until she remembers where she is. That there should be no Peeta here, no helmet. There should be Prim. From the angle of the sun—the _sun_—she can see that it's late afternoon. She has no idea how long she's slept. It's strange, that the sun still exists. How quickly we grow used to the dark.

She swings her legs gingerly off the bed and puts some experimental weight. Beneath her thin shift, her skin is mottled with cuts and bruises, like the mushrooms she sometimes collects for her mother in the forest. Her body creaks, bones a hundred years old. But eventually, she can stand. Eventually, she can take shuffling steps out of her room.

Prim is the first to see her emerge. She bursts into tears, fluttering about Katniss, too afraid to touch. Katniss cries, too, because she can.

"Don't worry," she grinds out, like a mouthful of rocks. "I feel worse than I look."

They laugh through tears, Prim and Mother, and then they coax her to sit, to eat, to drink, parched. Her first question: "How's Peeta?"

Mother assures her that Peeta's alive, he's okay, and then they fill her in, what's happened since the field trip. How her guesses were right, that they weren't the only ones trapped down there, so they weren't priority. Gale was a man possessed, working round-the-clock with his own band of volunteers to excavate back into the cave by hand.

"There were apparently some close calls," Mother adds somberly, and of course there were. Gale knows better than to go digging around at a cave-in.

The Capitol had flown in extra drills, and they reached the first group. Time was running out for the lovebirds. Somehow, the story had gotten out about Peeta making a break for it, about how he went back for her.

"They want to interview you!" Prim interjects, as though that's a good thing.

Katniss can hear it now. "Such a tragedy," Caesar would coo, baring a smile, "a veritable travesty, am I right? Yet poignant somehow that, despite these most dreadful of circumstances, the very worst, these two young people managed to find love."

It makes Katniss queasy, the idea of her ordeal being fodder for Capitol chatter. The insinuation that she and Peeta are together now, speculation at how they might have passed the time. Because if there's one thing that gets ratings on Capitol TV, it's sex.

Their exit route is _under investigation_, is all the Capitol foreman will say. "Miraculous," Caesar proclaims. As far as anyone can tell, the pair of them teleported to the surface, no tunnel in sight, minutes left before Peeta would have been nothing but another statistic in the Museum.

Katniss and mother share a look. She isn't the only one who remembers Father's stories.

She chafes to see Peeta, but it's not safe, what with all the beetles staking out her house (and his, mother informs her). They refuse to leave, even after several stern refusals from Gale with everything but his fists and a plea from her mother about how she'd been horribly maimed. Wrong thing to suggest, apparently, because it only seems to pique the Capitol's interest. Within days, they start getting courier pigeons from plastic surgeons—the rock stars of the Capitol—who would pay _them_ to let them sculpt their daughter's face. "We'll make her a goddess," they gush.

For several weeks, Katniss is trapped inside her house as effectively as she was down in that cave. She's climbing the walls and then finally, _finally_ there's a warehouse fire in District 2, a warehouse with ammunition in it, kerblammy! The lovebirds of District 12 are old news, so five minutes ago.

The beetles camped down their street go scurrying to their flying yachts, racing to be the first to bring you the exclusive from every possible angle.

* * *

On a Saturday, after the hullabaloo has died down, after they're absolutely sure that the media circus has well and truly disbanded, they have their end of the school year party. Oh, it's a different Saturday, and school has been out for some time, but it doesn't matter.

They got Katniss back, and that's all that matters.

She sits in a chair and watches quietly, her people. And as she watches, she sees an edge to Gale's expression. The mothers hover, expectant. There's surprise coming. She can feel it.

Sure enough, after dinner, Gale bangs his tin cup for attention. He stands and steps to where Katniss is sitting, gets down to her level. Asks her to be his wife, right there in front of Prim and her Mother and his entire family, his brothers punching each other to keep still, Prim and Posey clasping hands and fairly ready to pounce when Gale is back up from one knee.

And here's the part where the old Katniss would have frozen solid as ice, would have maybe socked him in the face, nay, the nose, the _dick_head, and would have stormed off to sulk in the woods for a couple of days, preferably sleeping up a tree where Gale can't as easily find her.

But the new Katniss, the one who swam in her underwear in an underground lake, who's had a boy save her life, thrice, and who's spoken with a telepathic glowworm, reborn into a new world, this Katniss takes Gale by the hands and helps him back up. "Everyone, Gale and I have some things to talk about it. And after we do, I have a story to tell you."

This Katniss takes Gale by his big, warm hand and leads him out of the house, then out of the Seam, and then he's leading her, supporting her weight, which has suddenly grown a bit unmanageable. They head to their forest, to the grassy knoll where they sit and stare at the valley below, the one that could lead anywhere.

"Katniss…" Gale begins, but before he can explain, before he can launch into a planned speech about how they should get married and have babies, she looks him right in the eye and says one word.

"Madge."

Gale's mouth snaps shut, all powers of persuasion forgotten. Then, a cautious "What about her?"

They've never spoken of her, not once. Katniss will speak of her now. "You let her sit with us. You brought her strawberries."

"So?" He shifts, wrapping an arm around his knees.

"Gale, you and me, we're easy. We're Seam and we're expected. But what about Madge?"

He's quiet for so long, she knows she struck it. Her first shot, no less. Finally, in a tone she's never heard him use, him admitting something to himself, he says, "She's the daughter of the Mayor." He won't look at her.

"And you're Gale. Since when do you care what other people think?"

"I don't." His scowl is dark.

"Then what?"

"I care about _you_."

"But Madge…"

He explodes from his seat. "Don't you get it? The mines tried to take you from me once now. I won't let them have you. I won't." Teeth gritted, it's the most savage she's heard him since his last Capitol rant. "You need to be out here, under the sky. You were made for this."

She stares up at him, beginning to understand now, a glimmer. For her, it's marriage or the mines. Her final Reaping, and then she has two years to make up her mind. Or the Capitol will make it up for her. Gale's offering himself as a way out. Madge is the Mayor's daughter. She has her own way out.

"You don't need to worry about me. Not anymore." Her turn to look away. Her face is hot.

And that's all she has to say, to Gale who knows her better than anyone. He peers into her face for a moment, then a slow smile spreads, the dawn of a new day.

"Well," is all he says, a revelation. They both get it now, two glimmers. Two sparks, the potential of a new future. Like stepping out of a mine shaft into a cavern of wonders. "It all makes sense now." He puts on a throaty falsetto and points to a cloud in the sky. "Look! A cheese bun!"

She punches him in the arm to cover her blush.

He laughs. "I should have known. The way to your heart has always been through your stomach. You do realize that he's had a thing for you for forever?"

She just smiles because Gale doesn't know the half of it. So she tells him their story, about the day with the bread, the day of the fight, and a more recent day, in a cave.

Later, as they amble home, her arm in his, Gale says, "The mothers will be disappointed."

"Daughter of the Mayor," she reminds.

"Cheese buns," he agrees.

She throws back her head and laughs. Laughs and laughs.

Before they go back inside, Gale pulls in her in for a hug. He whispers, "I'm glad it was him, down there with you."

"Me too."

* * *

When she's strong enough at last, when she can walk by herself to the Town, she goes to the Bakery. Peeta's father greets her at the side door, the one she and Gale use to deliver their wares. The one Peeta had used once, to toss her some bread.

The Baker doesn't seem surprised to see her. He winks. "He's been asking for you."

She raises her chin to him. "Sorry it took me so long," she says, and then he leads her upstairs, putting a finger over his lips as they pass his wife in the front of the store, our little secret. Then she's upstairs and then there's a door and then there's Peeta with his eyes open and everything, sitting up and happy and healthy in his bed. And he smiles in that way he does, just for her.

"You're here," he breathes, and she knows exactly what he means.

"Yes," she says, that first word she ever said to him. She stands quietly and just drinks him in. Here, in the light, it's harder to find the words. Here, where he can read so much in her face.

Then, her eye catches on something, and she doesn't need words. For there are pictures. Stepping deeper into his room, this inner sanctum, she sees that every inch of the four walls are plastered with a kaleidoscopic array of shapes and colors and textures—drawings and doodles and flourishes of all sizes, a few of them on the paper that they dole out at school, in the margins of his old exams, some of them on rough cloth, the bags that the Capitol sends full of flour. On many of them, Peeta has sketched ideas for cookies and cakes and other goodies she can't name. Some of his creations are almost architectural, like something you'd see in the Capitol, something the citizens there pay a pretty penny for, even though it's merely a sliver of food.

She's overwhelmed at this display, this glimpse into the rare and beautiful mind of Peeta Mellark. Sure, she'd seen him heads down in class, doodling, always with pencil to paper, seen him in the Bakery with his tongue between his lips, working over this cookie or that, but she would never have guessed _this_.

As she wends around his bed, she discovers new themes—flowers, animals, trees. He's explored it all, every part of their district that his eyes can reach. And then, then she discovers something else. Here, a braid. There, a red plaid dress. A pair of worn boots under a desk. Mere hints, parts of a broader whole. Taken individually, you would never know. But she knows.

Years, is what she's seeing.

"So, I have to warn you," he says as she drifts closer, patting at the blanket. At first she thinks he's asking her to sit, right there close to him. Then she looks again and she realizes what he's patting. Or rather, what he's _not_ patting. There, under the sheets where the lump of his leg should be, there's no lump. The thigh-shaped mound extending from his torso cliffs abruptly at his upper thigh.

She sits then, where his foot should have, could have, would have been, feeling sick and faint. It's too much, eyes from a thousand portraits stare accusingly. She did this. Her with her emergency tourniquet that she'd seen Mother do only once. She must have done something wrong, tied it too tight, obstructed the wrong vein or the wrong nerve…

"Apparently," he says lightly, watching her face, "you saved my life."

_Whipcrack_, goes her neck.

He tells her then, how she'd tied it just right, blocking the femoral artery that runs parallel to the femur, the one that, given a few more minutes, would have drained him dry.

"Your mother told me all about it." She doesn't understand. Why would mother have been here, in the Town, where she never goes? They have their own doctor in Town, from the Capitol.

Peeta babbles on. "Did you know that prolonged exposure to firedamp in the mines can cause vivid hallucinations? It explains a lot."

Firedamp. The flammable gas that caused Father.

"Like what?"

He waves a hand. "All kinds of crazy things. I dreamed you undressed me. I dreamed you told me you loved me." He peeks up at her for that one. "Then again, I also dreamed I rode in the belly of a worm, so."

"It wasn't a dream," she mutters, face hot.

He's intent, bright. "Which part?"

"All of it."

She thought he'd been luminous before, down in the deep and the dark, even with stars in his eyes. But here, above the earth, he's as radiant as the sun. Later, she'd tell him all about the clothes and the glowworm with a bit of Peeta in him.

But for now, his golden lashes flutter closed as she leans in for their very first kiss.

* * *

Later, Peeta gets to watch her hunt, although with him missing a leg and all, he's kinda loud.

"You're the best like this," he says. "With the wind in your hair and a bow at your lips." She shoots a leaf from a nearby branch, not through the hand of the leaf, mind you, but from the stem, just because she can.

"I like you at my lips," she teases, because she does that now.

Sometimes, they play hide and seek through the trees, with her always hiding because he totally can't, and she gives him hints by whistling at the mockingjays, who flock to her in droves, eager for the challenge her voice provides. She eggs them on, concocting more and more complicated melodies, crafting them into a mellifluous round that she can sometimes sing forever, until the hills are alive with the sound of music, mockingjays for mile after empty mile.

She takes Peeta to her Father's lake, where she teaches him to float. He's good at it, better than her, even, with one fewer leg to weigh him down.

Later, she gets to watch him bake. And she was right, she was absolutely right. Peeta is a _magnificent_ baker, even better to watch in person. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, she likes his chocolate cake more than his cheese buns. Because they were always his, you see, the ones that melt on your tongue. The ones that would somehow find their way in with the loaf of bread she'd traded, still warm from the oven. The ones that Gale never got, so he doesn't _know_.

But Peeta's chocolate cake, now that's something, especially when he feeds it to her. Or when he kisses the chocolate right off her lips, his tongue warm and melting in her mouth.

And then, when the time is right, Peeta proposes to her, in the woods, because he knows. He's always known. With a bit of finagling, and not a little bit of help from her, he gets down on his one knee and presents her with a ring, a stone tinged red and gold and yellow, the color of sunset.

She holds it up to the sun, recognizing it for exactly what it is, even reborn in this new shape. It's the piece of rough she'd found for him, down in the mines, dug out of the rubble, the beauty amidst the destruction. He'd kept it safe and then had it cut and set.

And she says to him, the first thing she ever said, _Yes_.

_Fin_

* * *

Author's note: Well this was…a pleasant surprise. Not at all the way I expected this story to go when I started. Mostly I just wanted to see me some bruised and broken Peeta, my favorite kind. Glad to see that not all muttations are evil. Peeta brings out the best in people. And, er, worms, apparently.

Let's pretend, for the sake of wrapping this story in a neat little bow, that the glowworm with a little bit of Peeta joins forces with District 13 and helps bring down Snow. It just moseys on over to the Capitol, pretty as you please, and eats the President. The real kind of eats. All that's left is a gaping hole where his throne should have been. And the people, seeing their leader swallowed by a giant worm from hell, repent of their ways. No more Hunger Games. The end.


End file.
